Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is an artist and multi instrumentalist working with voice in the realm of spontaneous music Through collaboration Robert has worked with such artists as Lucky Dragons, Alan Licht, Lee Ranaldo, White/Light, Kevin Martin, Tyondai Braxton and Genesis P-Orridge. http://www.lichensarealive.com/
Legendary Earth guitarist Dylan Carlson recently set out to pursue a solo endeavour, up to now he has released a cassette as drcarlsonalbion but there still remains an air of mystery and much anticipation as to what direction this solo musical endeavour will go next. For Supersonic, he will be teaming up with a number of other musicians including Teresa Colamonaco on vocals, Michael York on bagpipes, and Rogier Small on snare drum.
ZENI GEVA is a Japanese prog-hardcore band, led by singer and guitarist KK Null, a pioneering group of innovators and legends.
ZENI GEVA was founded in Tokyo in 1987 and quickly found a dedicated fan base in Europe and the US. Their popularity in the west enabled ZENI GEVA to be one of the first Japanese bands to tour in Europe and the US with bands like Neurosis, Melvins, Dazzling Killmen, Don Caballero, Eyehategod, Pain Teens, Shellac, Bastro, Crash Worship and more.
Canadian based composer and sound artist, Tim Hecker has spent the last decade inhabiting a unique intersection between noise, dissonance, and melody. In his varied and celebrated works, digital and organic sources tightly intertwine. The immense power and menace of his live shows make Hecker a contemporary master of volume and texture.
If you enjoy it slow and low, Germany’s Bohren & Der Club Of Gore will very likely do the trick. In fact, with each subsequent release the German quartet’s music grows increasingly refined.
Bohren are often dubbed doom-jazz, though this hardly defines the sound. Consider, maybe, the recent crop of jazz-oriented Rune Grammofon releases, then remove 1/2 of the notes and replace any and all folksiness with foreboding minimalist dirge and a Sunn 0))) streak. Now, mix in some John Cage, because Bohren & der Club of Gore are masters of silence, using space and shadows to create (and maintain) dynamics. They appeal to listeners of black metal as well as drone. But for all of that gloom/doom, one could also see them appealing to fans of minimalist ambience and spare electronics, as well those who enjoy adventurous “out” jazz. But regardless of your genre identification, you’d do best to concentrate, and let it work its way into your head. Time is on their side.
An improviser, composer, and an intrepid explorer on electric and acoustic guitar. There is a fair amount of experimentation involved in much of his string-work which can lead to audio realms rarely visited by others. Richard is perhaps best known as a founding member (along with brother Alan Bishop) of experimental ethnic-improv pioneers and underground tricksters Sun City Girls, who formed in 1981.
Promoting exciting new label Small But Hard with heavy as anything artists, including… Koyxeи is one of the many aliases of Kouhei Matsunaga, when in his Hip Hop/Breakbeat guise with vocalists & MCs. C_C – after listening to a lot of jungle, dub and breakcore, Eduardo Ribuyo had his brains blown when he met NHK, aka Kouhei Matsunaga. The ensuing metamorphosis brought us C_C, master of handmade beats and analogue feedback loops. Taking k7 tapes as his primary material, and sourcing sounds from anything and everything, C_C produces heavily textured music breathing, repetitious, and deep. Live performances envelop, soupy and treacly, moving incognito through his signature improvised flow. Devilman comprises of three strong individual talents, Shige (DJ Scotch Egg) on bass, Gorgonn (Dokkebi Q) live mixing, and Taigen Kawabe (Bo Ningen) providing vocals. They are part of a secret underground organisation fronted by the mysterious MR. D. DJ Scotch Bonnet is the new solo project of Shigeru Ishihara, aka DJ Scotch Egg. A maverick, crazed with energy and excess creativity, Ishihara’s chance meeting with Matsunaga Kouhei spurred an isotopic explosion of activity and inspiration; the result was new dope style distorted bass and beats Kakawaka makes noise. The lunatic who took over the asylum, Kawakawa merrily blends childish tomfoolery with mind mangling noise. Abrasive sound sculptures beat you into submission until you are sick on the carpet. He spits in your eye and pisses on your face. For thus it is written in the great journal of musical endeavour that someone somewhere will achieve maximum joy from this unholy racket.
iconAclass is the new project from MC/producer Will Brooks best known as Dälek. As front person and co-producer in the group Dälek he explored the left of centre/ wall of noise world ala My Bloody Valentine meets Public Enemy on 6 studio albums.
iconAclass, his newest solo project, sees him maintaining the gritty view of boom-bap he is know for, while returning to his roots.
For the Ones is pure hip-hop, hypnotic heavy beats serve as more than just a backdrop for this MC. They focus a spotlight squarely on the lyrics, and iconAclass has a lot on his mind!
Pushing forward into the new millennia with DJ Motiv providing the cuts, iconAclass is the next chapter for this ever evolving musician.
A Supersonic favourite and Japan’s noisiest export, Shigeru Isihara never completed Tetris as a child. So now he wreaks his vengeance upon the world, armed with a Gameboy and a megaphone. Due to collaborating with just about everyone in the music industry, the Scotch Egg sound is constantly evolving and is bound to touch on something you’ll enjoy. …That is when your hearing finally returns.. http://www.myspace.com/djscotchegg
Rising from the gutter that trickles down Lewisham Way, South East London comes the ever-mighty and ever-so-fucked-up DrumCunt. Taking cues from grime, garage, techno, noise, rave, digi-dancehall and basically every single Sound(s) of the Universe, DrumCunt is here to save your sorry soul from the lightweight coffee table jingles passed off as “bangers” in these increasingly dark and drizzly days.
Featuring and led by Hey Colossus and Shit and Shine drummer Rhys (CNT1) and augmented by all round fellow Shitter and all round HyperBlackBass Leon (CNT2).
A Brighton/London based collective arranged around Shigeru Ishihara (better known as DJ Scotch Egg), E-Da (Ex-Boredoms drummer), and K-Power (Ex-power up!) Drum Eyes combine dueling drums, cornets, keys and game boys to form a devastating live show.
Their debut album dropped in September 2010 amidst feverish anticipation in the wake of member’s reputations and the band’s devastation of audiences countrywide with their insatiable, mind expanding live performances including a set at Supersonic festival in 2009.
Modulate are an audio visual collective who first came together in 2001 through a shared interest in electronic music and abstract art. Over the years, Modulate’s output has had three main strands: curating and producing events and projects, developing their own audio-visual compositions and performances, and creating multi-speaker sound installations. A concurrent theme has been an interest in modulating spaces and creating abstract symbolic realms of sound and audio-visual expression.
The Berg Sans Nipple is Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren. The former is a suave Frenchman from the dirty rues of Paris, the latter hails from the dusty plains of Nebraska. Two drums, synths, samples, a ton of percussion and vocals hardcore kids gone gamelan, caught in devastatingly beautiful melodies and a mind bending rhythm section.
Since their initial formation in 2006, the London-based Teeth Of The Sea have metamorphosized into the most adventurous and intrepid psychedelic rock outfit in the UK. Taking on board influences like Ennio Morricone, Eno, Delia Derbyshire, Goblin, Butthole Surfers and Harmonia, they’ve arrived at an incendiary sound that effortlessly marries the aural enlightenment of a far-reaching avant-garde sensibility with the reckless abandon of trashy rock & roll immediacy.
Teeth Of The Sea exist on a strange and beguiling astral plane, whereby the boundaries between the synth odysseys of the 70s, the guitar-noise-fuelled infernos of the 80s, horrorscore schlock, Reich-ian repetition, and a whole plethora of other cathode-ray and speaker-stack birthed epiphanies are blurred into one futuristic and fearsomely coherent whole. Teeth Of The Sea are spinning into a whole new orbit.
Alva Noto is a stage name of sound artist Carsten Nicolai who uses art and music as complementary tools to create microscopic views of creative processes. He is a member of the music groups Signal (with Frank Bretschneider, AKA Komet and Olaf Bender, AKA Byetone) and Cyclo. (with Ryoji Ikeda).
Nicolai transforms sound by looping oscillators and tone generators. He does not use sequencers, but edits his work to give his compositions rhythmic structures. Clicks and glitches are not used as ornamental additions to the compositions but make up the essential rhythmic and harmonic elements of the work.
“Nicolai, along with sometime collaborator Ryoji Ikeda, is in the vanguard of artists whose work represents a genuinely experimental fusion of visual and sound art.” The Wire
Olaf Benders, manager of Raster-Noto record label, performs solo under the name Byetone.
Bender creates his music digitally. He assembles sine tones to complex sound fabrics. digital clicks and effect plug-ins are essential to create the rhythms. All this is brought in a timely relation and so a track is born — an artificial world without any physical effort.
Bender uses visuals in the sense of animated light. Abstract animations support the abstract pieces of music — in this way the rhythm of music is transformed into a graphic equivalent. Bender controls the animations in realtime. In connection with sound effect processing this enables him to interact live on stage.
“Slabdragger can, and will, stand toe-to-toe with Torche, YOB, Floor, Sleep and Electric Wizard. Big words for a largely unknown band from South London. But we genuinely feel that we have an undiscovered gem on our hands with Slabdragger – they are that good.
Two years in the making, and ridiculously fully-formed and fully-realised, Slabdragger sing about epic quests to Nepal to find killer weed, rubbish Roman Centurions, battling huge Octopian creatures and drinking rum. ” Holy Roar Records
Silver Apples appeared on the New York scene in 1967. Far from the Dead/Airplane-influenced West Coast hippies, their psychedelic music came with a dark-repetitive-New-York-scary flavour that did not sound like the rest of the Summer of Love.
Decades after their brief yet influential career first ground to a sudden and mysterious halt, the Silver Apples remain one of pop music’s true enigmas: a surreal, almost unprecedented duo, their music explored interstellar drones and hums, pulsing rhythms and electronically-generated melodies years before similar ideas were adopted in the work of acolytes ranging from Suicide to Spacemen 3 to Laika.
The band is now touring as a solo act, SIMEON, aka “The Oscillation Man”, who sings and plays his famous hand-made instrument, ‘The Simeon”, made of “nine audio oscillators piled on top of each other and eighty-six manual controls to control lead, rhythm and bass pulses with hands, feet and elbows”…
Fresh from their artist residency at Roadburn Festival, Supersonic are delighted to announce that both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord will join the festival bill.
Pharaoh Overlord are a self described “Stoner Rock” side project of Circle, but don’t go getting visions of Nebula and Kyuss in your head just yet: this is more like “Stoner Minimalism.” Pharaoh Overlord deconstruct the standard rock song creating vast soundscapes that stretch time and space. Riffs capable of moving mountains repeat endlessly and when the silence finally comes, it’s deafening.
There are some bands who are content to make a record, play a few shows, and exist as a musical entity only when it’s time to make a new album, and then there are bands like The Skull Defekts who are the backbone of their musical communities. Hard at work on their numerous individual projects, constantly collaborating, releasing their own records on their own imprints, and touring incessantly, The Skull Defekts are Sweden’s answer to the States’ Sonic Youth and the Netherlands’ The Ex and one of the centerpieces of the Swedish experimental rock scene.
The project of former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris. The project was formed in the early ’90s by Harris along with Nic Bullen (one of the founder members of Napalm Death in 1981). Bullen left the group in April 1995 and the projects continues on to this day as an essentially one man show.
Industrial and experimental in nature, much of the output focuses on minimalist beats with an emphasis on very deep bass lines, often resembling dub and trip-hop in structure.
Located in the far reaches in the south of France lies Bayonne, a small City untouched by modern architecture and home to one of the slowest, heaviest and loudest funeral doom metal bands Europe has to offer. They call them selves Monarch and they ascended to this Earth in the year of 2004.
Drawing comparisons to the likes of heavy weights Khanate, Burzum, Corrupted and the Melvins, Monarch are a unique band with the pure intent on creating blood curdling feedback drenched physical sound through the use of insane volume and low end frequencies, oh, and with a wall of sweet vintage amps.
Lucky Dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures–equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don’t know why. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances–with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together–building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. It sounds–and looks–like simple and ancient patterns coming together and falling apart in a sincere attempt to let wires and screens and words become clear and crystal.
After a storming DJ set at last year’s Supersonic, we’ve invited Cloaks back for more, considered to be one of the more abstract and uncompromising production teams to have emerged from the spannered and industrial-edged UK dubstep scene. Their distorted and often claustrophobic sound, created using found sound and circuit bent instruments was first debuted on the London based Werk Discs, with their output drawing comparison to not only modern bass music but to the darker sounds of noise and industrial.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is an artist and multi instrumentalist working with voice in the realm of spontaneous music Through collaboration Robert has worked with such artists as Lucky Dragons, Alan Licht, Lee Ranaldo, White/Light, Kevin Martin, Tyondai Braxton and Genesis P-Orridge.
